I almost did an honest-to-Omaha spit-take when I read this name... it's almost like they were planning for the stuff to wind up in the river.

What really scares me about all this is that no one seems to have any idea what MCHM's potential hazards are. I haven't heard a single reference to am MSDS for this stuff since the story (and the storage) broke.

Unless it is a food or drug additive all chemicals are assumed to be safe until proven dangerous. The various agencies have no authority to declare a chemical dangerous unless it has been determined by scientific investigation, and they have no budget to study them. So the rely on university studies or industry studies. Then industry files lawsuits challenging their determination of harm. Ifvtge judge agrees with the regulators then they can put special restrictions on it based on the findings of harm.

nekom:In a way, this could be seen as exculpatory. There's no way he could have discovered any and all problems within a few weeks. On the other hand, if there's bank money in this, they're going to be pissed that due diligence wasn't taken. In the end, hopefully this leads to some better regulations and oversight.

Houses are inspected before sale. I see no reason a tank containing dangerous chemicals can't be.

Emposter:justtray: J Clifford Forrest. That is the man responsible for this.

Please be sure to repeat it in every one of these threads. If he wants to wriggle out of this, his life should be public and over.

Except not at all, way to miss the point. He bought the company just weeks before. There's no way he could have had any part in the decisions that led up to and resulted in the spill. Hard to figure out how you're not getting this, what with it being in the Fark headline and a paragraph in the article. But hey, if you want to blame him while letting off the previous owners (you know, the people actually responsible), go for it.

Hes not going to sleep with you. He IS responsible. He should have done his dilligence and realized there had been no inspections and that the overflow wasnt functioning. Thats his fault, he is to blame. Like i said, he can sue the people he bought it from, but he IS responsible, 100%

Well, clearly in all the hubbub of a hasty sale of their owning company, these storage tanks forgot to fly south for the winter like they normally do to avoid the cold weather they can't withstand.

If there really is a ruptured water pipe I've gotta wonder how much forensic work can be done on it. -If- it even exists. That sounds like a one-in-a-million set of circumstances leading to a freeze happening in just the right spot. Unlikely enough that I'd put equal odds on Freedom going out there and compacting the soil next to the tank to deliberately pop the line.

Grungehamster:Heraclitus: Either Clifford really got caught holding the bag, or he is ready to retire and is taking one for the team.

This sounds like an elaborate shell game to protect the larger corporations assets.

Freedom Inc. was purchased 2 weeks before the leak was discovered?

They only have 3 million in assets?

Filed Chapter 11 immediately?

Another set of shell companies incorporated almost overnight, to provide financial backing with plausible deniability?

Something stinks, and it doesnt smell of licorice....

Yep, plus the fact that the founder of Freedom Industries is a convicted embezzler that the involved parties claim is no longer involved but is still on the paperwork for the business (Carl Lemley Kennedy II).

Being "on the paperwork" doesn't mean jack. It just means that you can't update contracts that are already made without re-negotiating or going through insane costs.

Bondith:It seems the idea is that water turning to ice expanded, pushing that mystery "object" through the floor of the tank. Hard to say if the court will buy that. Shouldn't steel tanks containing dangerous chemicals be able to withstand the consequences of winter weather?

It should also be fairly easy to examine the bottom of the tank and see if something's been forced up through it from below.

Worked for a water and sewer utility GC for years. Welded steel tank or bolt together glass lined tank that we built had a pad-base, included 10" of diesel oil soaked sand, on top of fine stone 'screenings' that prevented rust and cushioned the tank bottoms from 'mystery objects' during freezing and thawing. And when we built them at landfills for leachate treatment facilities, they all had concrete containment ring walls with drains, in case of a breach.

Aquapope:if a company sells a gas station, it has to have all sorts of EPA studies done to see if there is leakage before it can be sold, to establish liability on the seller or the buyer in the case of future leakage. Also the leaks, if found, have to be fixed and the seller has to pay for remediation.

I would think that selling a company that owns big tanks of MCHM would have to jump through similar hoops before the company being sold. So somebody should have known that the tanks were leaking. The big arctic vortex by itself couldn't have caused the leak, but it could have busted open a small leak that had been forming during 20+ years of not being inspected.

BBBBUUUUTTTTT, the tanks weren't sold, only the company that owns the tanks, and all you're trying to do is make it THAT MUCH HARDER for the job creators in this county to get any money.jobs created.

justtray:Emposter: justtray: J Clifford Forrest. That is the man responsible for this.

Please be sure to repeat it in every one of these threads. If he wants to wriggle out of this, his life should be public and over.

Except not at all, way to miss the point. He bought the company just weeks before. There's no way he could have had any part in the decisions that led up to and resulted in the spill. Hard to figure out how you're not getting this, what with it being in the Fark headline and a paragraph in the article. But hey, if you want to blame him while letting off the previous owners (you know, the people actually responsible), go for it.

Hes not going to sleep with you. He IS responsible. He should have done his dilligence and realized there had been no inspections and that the overflow wasnt functioning. Thats his fault, he is to blame. Like i said, he can sue the people he bought it from, but he IS responsible, 100%

The hell he is, and your inexplicable desire to jump on him would let the people actually at fault get off, just because they managed to offload the time bomb they built onto someone else just before it blew up. I hope whatever prosecutors end up going after culprits down the line are more rational, and don't let the people who created this mess and kept it from being found and fixed for years get off scot-free.

Emposter:justtray: Emposter: justtray: J Clifford Forrest. That is the man responsible for this.

Please be sure to repeat it in every one of these threads. If he wants to wriggle out of this, his life should be public and over.

Except not at all, way to miss the point. He bought the company just weeks before. There's no way he could have had any part in the decisions that led up to and resulted in the spill. Hard to figure out how you're not getting this, what with it being in the Fark headline and a paragraph in the article. But hey, if you want to blame him while letting off the previous owners (you know, the people actually responsible), go for it.

Hes not going to sleep with you. He IS responsible. He should have done his dilligence and realized there had been no inspections and that the overflow wasnt functioning. Thats his fault, he is to blame. Like i said, he can sue the people he bought it from, but he IS responsible, 100%

The hell he is, and your inexplicable desire to jump on him would let the people actually at fault get off, just because they managed to offload the time bomb they built onto someone else just before it blew up. I hope whatever prosecutors end up going after culprits down the line are more rational, and don't let the people who created this mess and kept it from being found and fixed for years get off scot-free.

Why not both? It seems no one has clean hands in this matter, including the private water company.

Emposter:justtray: Emposter: justtray: J Clifford Forrest. That is the man responsible for this.

Please be sure to repeat it in every one of these threads. If he wants to wriggle out of this, his life should be public and over.

Except not at all, way to miss the point. He bought the company just weeks before. There's no way he could have had any part in the decisions that led up to and resulted in the spill. Hard to figure out how you're not getting this, what with it being in the Fark headline and a paragraph in the article. But hey, if you want to blame him while letting off the previous owners (you know, the people actually responsible), go for it.

Hes not going to sleep with you. He IS responsible. He should have done his dilligence and realized there had been no inspections and that the overflow wasnt functioning. Thats his fault, he is to blame. Like i said, he can sue the people he bought it from, but he IS responsible, 100%

The hell he is, and your inexplicable desire to jump on him would let the people actually at fault get off, just because they managed to offload the time bomb they built onto someone else just before it blew up. I hope whatever prosecutors end up going after culprits down the line are more rational, and don't let the people who created this mess and kept it from being found and fixed for years get off scot-free.

Im sorry for your learning disability. Please find a tutor that can help you with your illiteracy.

wildsnowllama:Houses are inspected before sale. I see no reason a tank containing dangerous chemicals can't be.

Absolutely. Only an industry is a lot more complex a purchase than a house. I would have thought that anyone lending them money to make the buy (if they did in fact get a loan) would have insisted on a full appraisal and inspection. I'm not sure how liability law works exactly, but a case could be made for the defense "Look, we JUST bought the place."

Emposter:justtray: Emposter: justtray: J Clifford Forrest. That is the man responsible for this.

Please be sure to repeat it in every one of these threads. If he wants to wriggle out of this, his life should be public and over.

Except not at all, way to miss the point. He bought the company just weeks before. There's no way he could have had any part in the decisions that led up to and resulted in the spill. Hard to figure out how you're not getting this, what with it being in the Fark headline and a paragraph in the article. But hey, if you want to blame him while letting off the previous owners (you know, the people actually responsible), go for it.

Hes not going to sleep with you. He IS responsible. He should have done his dilligence and realized there had been no inspections and that the overflow wasnt functioning. Thats his fault, he is to blame. Like i said, he can sue the people he bought it from, but he IS responsible, 100%

The hell he is, and your inexplicable desire to jump on him would let the people actually at fault get off, just because they managed to offload the time bomb they built onto someone else just before it blew up. I hope whatever prosecutors end up going after culprits down the line are more rational, and don't let the people who created this mess and kept it from being found and fixed for years get off scot-free.

There is a blame pie here about thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds so there is more than enough for dozens of people to take a nice, big slice and plenty left over for seconds.

In my opinion, this is another example showing that the nation's infrastructure, both public and private, is seriously deteriorating. Unfortunately, repairing and replacing the infrastructure takes the kind of money no one wants to spend. Taxpayers, especially the tea partiers, whine about high taxes and corporations ignore these costs as they seek to maximize profits. Obama and Congress could still institute a massive public works program that would stimulate the economy and create jobs while modernizing the nation but they would rather bailout Wall Street, waste money on pointless wars, and spy on the public.

wildsnowllama:nekom: In a way, this could be seen as exculpatory. There's no way he could have discovered any and all problems within a few weeks. On the other hand, if there's bank money in this, they're going to be pissed that due diligence wasn't taken. In the end, hopefully this leads to some better regulations and oversight.

Houses are inspected before sale. I see no reason a tank containing dangerous chemicals can't be.

Why am I just not surprised there's a person named "Kennedy II" involved in this?/met a guy who claimed to be a Kennedy, although his last name was Kiefer. He was a total self-absorbed fraudulent farkstick//apologies to any people here named Kennedy who are not fraudulent farksticks

Necronic:Bondith: It seems the idea is that water turning to ice expanded, pushing that mystery "object" through the floor of the tank. Hard to say if the court will buy that. Shouldn't steel tanks containing dangerous chemicals be able to withstand the consequences of winter weather?

It should also be fairly easy to examine the bottom of the tank and see if something's been forced up through it from below.

Weren't these tanks buried?

Even if they weren't its not like people go and thoroughly check their tanks every day. That said they should have had a system in place to quickly identify a leak (like a float) and a way to remedy it (like a backup tank they could have pumped into).

Why do you would to impose such a financial burden on a business by insisting they safely store chemicals that can wipe out a city or state's water supply?

Please be sure to repeat it in every one of these threads. If he wants to wriggle out of this, his life should be public and over.

Except not at all, way to miss the point. He bought the company just weeks before. There's no way he could have had any part in the decisions that led up to and resulted in the spill. Hard to figure out how you're not getting this, what with it being in the Fark headline and a paragraph in the article. But hey, if you want to blame him while letting off the previous owners (you know, the people actually responsible), go for it.

Hes not going to sleep with you. He IS responsible. He should have done his dilligence and realized there had been no inspections and that the overflow wasnt functioning. Thats his fault, he is to blame. Like i said, he can sue the people he bought it from, but he IS responsible, 100%

The hell he is, and your inexplicable desire to jump on him would let the people actually at fault get off, just because they managed to offload the time bomb they built onto someone else just before it blew up. I hope whatever prosecutors end up going after culprits down the line are more rational, and don't let the people who created this mess and kept it from being found and fixed for years get off scot-free.

Why not both? It seems no one has clean hands in this matter, including the private water company.

Only if both are actually responsible. Forrest is responsible to whatever investors he just farked, for sure, since he clearly failed in his duty to safeguard their money. And he's a shmuck for having his company go into turtle mode instead of stepping forward to help mitigate the disaster. He might even be a tiny bit responsible for the actual spill depending on what he did in the three months he owned the company, though probably not (negligence requires that a person not take reasonable steps to prevent the damage, they don't have to be inhumanly perfect and fix everything intantly...3 weeks is a very short time to find and fix every defect in a major acquisition, especially considering such defects were probably glossed over if not actively hidden from the new purchaser. For example, in premises liability (not the same, but similar), an owner isn't liable for injuries caused by a condition they didn't know about (unless they should have)...the previous owner is or the builder). The article provides no evidence that he was told about the defective tank or that he later found out (prior to the accident, of course). In the event that he did find out, his responsibility to fix it in mere weeks would be miniscule compared to overall responsibility by previous owners (and moral responsibility of shiatty regulators and local politicians, but we can ignore that I guess). Not equal responsibility, definitely not mostly responsible, and certainly not 100% responsible.

ukexpat:wildsnowllama: nekom: In a way, this could be seen as exculpatory. There's no way he could have discovered any and all problems within a few weeks. On the other hand, if there's bank money in this, they're going to be pissed that due diligence wasn't taken. In the end, hopefully this leads to some better regulations and oversight.

Houses are inspected before sale. I see no reason a tank containing dangerous chemicals can't be.

That should be SOP during due diligence.

It is. It's called a Phase II Environmental Site Investigation. Used to work with geologists on them./in layman's terms: Phase I asks if there are or were any potential spill sources on a site. Phase II checks the integrity of identified sources to see if they have leaked or are in imminent danger of leaking. Phase III is the delineation and cleanup of identified leaks.//the trick is, whoever engineered these tanks for the previous owner certified them as good. If a failure was not detectable at the time of sale, why flag it as an imminent leak?

runwiz:In my opinion, this is another example showing that the nation's infrastructure, both public and private, is seriously deteriorating. Unfortunately, repairing and replacing the infrastructure takes the kind of money no one wants to spend. Taxpayers, especially the tea partiers, whine about high taxes and corporations ignore these costs as they seek to maximize profits. Obama and Congress could still institute a massive public works program that would stimulate the economy and create jobs while modernizing the nation but they would rather bailout Wall Street, waste money on pointless wars, and spy on the public.

I'm pretty sure that if Obama proposed The New Deal II: Electrification Boogaloo, Congress would decide it was time to holler about the debt limit and that gubbermint can't create jeorbs.

They'd move the goalposts, too...announce a dam building project at Davis Bacon wages, where a ditchdigger gets paid $40 an hour, Republicans would complain that people had to move to the job site instead of staying in their communities, and that it was only a two year gig, not a 20 year career opportunity. But I digress.

1) Freedom didn't report the spill; instead, EPA officials found their employees throwing sandbags around to try to sop the chemical up2) The identity of the chemical was only discovered by pure chance: an EPA official, who by random chance had previous experience working with the chemical, smelled it onsite and raised the alarm3) Initial reports from the Water company were that they were alerted to the presence of the chemical by the smell; yet, days later, they've told residents that being able to smell the chemical in their water shouldn't be cause for alarm4) The water company, two or three days in, suddenly stopped taking direct inquires from the press, and instead decided that press communication could only occur if questions were submitted ahead of time, and through a 3rd party5) Officials tested for a crude version of the chemical. Only after all residents were told their water is safe was it revealed that would actually leaked into the water was a combination of chemicals, most of which were untested6) 2 days after telling residents they could drink the water, pregnant women were told that, in fact, maybe they shouldn't be drinking the water7) Emergency water supplies set up to distribute to customers who had no access to clean water were drawn from the site of the original spill8) Freedom Industries declared bankruptcy, and immediately received an emergency loan for a company with one listed official: the president of Freedom Industries9) the Water Company put a color-coded map on their website. On the legend were splotches of red and blue. 3 days in to clearing customers to resume drinking their water, the legend entry next to the color blue and the words "Water is safe" was modified to include an asterisk.10) County health officials, responding to an increased number of hospital admittances after the all-clear was given, are chalking it up to flu season.11) The only thing our Governor and junior senator have been clear about: don't blame this on coal. Additionally, Senator Joe Manchin on Saturday said, "To err is human" when asked about the need for additional regulations to prevent this from happening in the future.

--

To err is f*cking human.

Maybe if all this ineptitude was included in a single article, more people would care about what's happening here.

CalvinMorallis:Maybe if all this ineptitude was included in a single article, more people would care about what's happening here.

That really does put a whole new spin on the situation, rather than the "buyer's remorse" one in the article.

I normally favorite people in shades of red for being idiots or various kinds of bigots/racists/other similar right wing garbage. I favorite people in green for being funny or for reliably making really good points. You will be my first person I've favorited in blue, for making a really informative contribution to the thread that would have been really useful to know before. (yes I should have been doing that before, whatever)

nekom:In a way, this could be seen as exculpatory. There's no way he could have discovered any and all problems within a few weeks. On the other hand, if there's bank money in this, they're going to be pissed that due diligence wasn't taken. In the end, hopefully this leads to some better regulations and oversight.

It depends. If the just bought assets, it might help (but could easily get nailed just the same for failure to inspect it prior to purchasing).

If they bought the company, it probably won't help since they assumethe company's liabilities.

Emposter:CalvinMorallis: Maybe if all this ineptitude was included in a single article, more people would care about what's happening here.

That really does put a whole new spin on the situation, rather than the "buyer's remorse" one in the article.

I normally favorite people in shades of red for being idiots or various kinds of bigots/racists/other similar right wing garbage. I favorite people in green for being funny or for reliably making really good points. You will be my first person I've favorited in blue, for making a really informative contribution to the thread that would have been really useful to know before. (yes I should have been doing that before, whatever)

That's really my biggest issue with all the reporting being done on this. People in Nevada, Connecticut or South Dakota probably care fark all about environmental disasters in WV. This tendency is reenforced when the national media only report parts of the story, in separate articles, spread out over the course of several days. So if you open last Tuesday's New York Times (for example), their may be an article that reads "Water company in WV refers reporters to intermediary". Kinda shady, but, whatever, not too bad overall. Open up Wednesday's Chicago Tribune and read how "Most affected WV communities cleared to resume drinking water." Alright, cool, you think. Thursday's Washington Times? "Water distribution wells temporarily suspended because of chemical smell." That's pretty dumb, you think.

Reported, and taken, piecemeal, it just seems like a bad regional story, augmented by a fark-up or two. But if someone with more journalistic chops than I could take the time and effort to do the whole shebang, beginning to end, I really think this would resonate more with people.

It probably does suck a whole lot to make an investment like that and have it fall apart so quickly.Then again, I probably wouldn't buy a chemical storage facility that hadn't been inspected for 20 years. I mean, when I bought my house I got my own inspection done on the place before closing...

serial_crusher:It probably does suck a whole lot to make an investment like that and have it fall apart so quickly.Then again, I probably wouldn't buy a chemical storage facility that hadn't been inspected for 20 years. I mean, when I bought my house I got my own inspection done on the place before closing...

I'd like to see more digging through corporate ownership of the various companies involved as well as other dealings between them.

serial_crusher:It probably does suck a whole lot to make an investment like that and have it fall apart so quickly.Then again, I probably wouldn't buy a chemical storage facility that hadn't been inspected for 20 years. I mean, when I bought my house I got my own inspection done on the place before closing...

That's the big thing that mostly negates this article for me. Okay, the tanks were inspected and deemed safe. Great. If I'm buying the place, I'm not taking YOUR word for that. Unless the few hundred bucks to hire an inspector blows out the budget for the entire deal, he's coming to take a second look and make sure the seller's not blowing smoke.

Syrrh:serial_crusher: It probably does suck a whole lot to make an investment like that and have it fall apart so quickly.Then again, I probably wouldn't buy a chemical storage facility that hadn't been inspected for 20 years. I mean, when I bought my house I got my own inspection done on the place before closing...

That's the big thing that mostly negates this article for me. Okay, the tanks were inspected and deemed safe. Great. If I'm buying the place, I'm not taking YOUR word for that. Unless the few hundred bucks to hire an inspector blows out the budget for the entire deal, he's coming to take a second look and make sure the seller's not blowing smoke.

...and that's yet another piece missing from this current version of the story.

Inspectors found that Freedom's storage facilities were in need of over $1 million in repairs, and a company spokesperson acknowledged that they had earmarked funds to make needed repairs, but just hadn't gotten around to it. This was early last week.

That narrative, of course, is completely at odds with the new claim that cold weather in combination with a broken water line is to blame, but since someone living outside the affected area needs to comb back through 2 weeks worth of news stories from countless different sources to figure that out, it doesn't really matter.

How does a community decide that is a good idea? Sure, they save tax money on operations, but they pay more in the end to give the company a profit-margin. Short-sighted people are just incredibly stupid.

SisterMaryElephant:Aquapope: if a company sells a gas station, it has to have all sorts of EPA studies done to see if there is leakage before it can be sold, to establish liability on the seller or the buyer in the case of future leakage. Also the leaks, if found, have to be fixed and the seller has to pay for remediation.

I would think that selling a company that owns big tanks of MCHM would have to jump through similar hoops before the company being sold. So somebody should have known that the tanks were leaking. The big arctic vortex by itself couldn't have caused the leak, but it could have busted open a small leak that had been forming during 20+ years of not being inspected.

BBBBUUUUTTTTT, the tanks weren't sold, only the company that owns the tanks, and all you're trying to do is make it THAT MUCH HARDER for the job creators in this county to get any money.jobs created.

In a way, jobs are created.

Annual manhours added to evonomy had there been responsible governance of this company: only 40 or so. Employing one government inspector to looking at these tanks only once a year isn't enough to resolve our sluggish economy.

Annual manhours added to economy added by irresponsible governance of this company: Thousands. There's envirnomental disaster cleanup work, litigation lawsuits, court filings, news stories to write. Lots of work to be had here.

nekom:wildsnowllama:Houses are inspected before sale. I see no reason a tank containing dangerous chemicals can't be.

Absolutely. Only an industry is a lot more complex a purchase than a house. I would have thought that anyone lending them money to make the buy (if they did in fact get a loan) would have insisted on a full appraisal and inspection. I'm not sure how liability law works exactly, but a case could be made for the defense "Look, we JUST bought the place."

And who are the original owners, anyway? I don't remember seeing them in the article.

The way this all gone down, I would be surprised if the original owners aren't somehow closely tied to the new owners.

I almost did an honest-to-Omaha spit-take when I read this name... it's almost like they were planning for the stuff to wind up in the river.

What really scares me about all this is that no one seems to have any idea what MCHM's potential hazards are. I haven't heard a single reference to am MSDS for this stuff since the story (and the storage) broke.